Accomplice
by minorgrace
Summary: Seeley Booth struggles to save the people he loves from himself.


Title: Accomplice

Author: Lostakasha

Fandom: _Bones / Vanished_

Pairing: Seeley Booth/Graham Kelton, Booth/Hodgins UST, Booth/Camille implied.

Rating: M/NC-17

Disclaimer: Don't own them. But you'd see this onscreen if I did.

Summary: Booth struggles to save the people he loves from himself. I

While this story is technically a crossover, you don't need to have seen _Vanished_ to get it. If you don't know who Graham Kelton is, just picture Brian Kinney (Gale Harold) from QAF and you'll be all set. In _Vanished_, Special Agent Graham Kelton is killed on the job. This story sticks to that. Spoilers for _Vanished_ through episode 9; for _Bones_ Through Season 2, _Aliens in a Spaceship_.

Lyric: _Ecstasy_ by VAST

**Accomplice**

_What's irritating about love is that it's a crime that requires an accomplice. – Charles Baudelaire_

Desire slumbers within him, deep and solemn. Need is Booth's sleeping dog, feral and fearsome when wrested awake. Only the dead sleep forever; his desire is nothing of the kind, so he walks through his life on eggshells and shards of glass and prays each night for strength.

For stealth.

Because when this ferocious dog wakes up Booth is slave, not master. With that knowledge fueling his existence he works every day to keep the sleeping beast undisturbed. He exercises and tinkers the tension away, fills his mind with mysteries to unravel and other demons to fight. He fucks the beautiful women in his life, lusts unrepentantly after those he can't have, and loves his son with protective passion. He revels in that child, lives for every phone call and fall in the dirt and aches as he watches him grow into his bones and skin and into a life with boundaries and rules and expectations.

Together, it's almost enough to keep the beast in suspended animation, hibernating under the well-set layers of his life. Almost.

When he buried his desire without looking at it, without understanding it, he buried its trigger right along with it. Unintended consequence: the dog is always in charge.

Booth just keeps moving and saying his prayers.

He has his seven year GA chip, but he still gambles.

One night at Wong Foo's he sat with Jack after the others left and they talked about religion and Hodgins went off about Thomas Aquinas and the fallacy of doctrine.

"You ought to know by now that prayer's a loser's bet, baby," Hodgins said, his eyes narrow, mouth curved around the endearment as though it meant something.

_The sleeping dog stretched and moaned, all muscle and teeth and instinct, up on its haunches and sniffing and hungry after such a long, restful nap._

Jack laughed and tipped his glass toward Booth, touched the rim of his pint against his. "It's faith. It's risk. It's just not my kind of game."

"It's not a game," Booth lied, and there it was: the itch in his wrists, the fine buzz of the needle inking his shadow's identity into his skin.

_That's Booth's biggest tell when the big dog wants out – indigo ink hums in his veins, singing about fate and soul and inescapability. Booth's tats itch as though they still need time to heal. As if they haven't been part of him since basic training. As if his wrists were bare the first time he'd been by fucked a man._

The next time he felt it with Jack they were arguing in the car with Brennan. Jack was spouting crazy conspiracy shit one second, and in the next sharing cohesive thoughts that made disparate bits and pieces of the case click in Booth's brain like no sample or test or hologram could have.

He caught the spark of azure eyes in the rearview that day and realized in the days thereafter that he was living to show up at the lab just to walk past him, just to give him shit, make him snarl and laugh and bitch about meaningless things and find a glimpse of that everlasting blue.

One afternoon he scooped a bag of playground sand into an evidence bag and brought it to Jack, sparing his sacrifice. In return they shot the shit, and the look of grateful surprise on Jack's face and the feel of his hand clapping his shoulder fueled Booth's idle thoughts for days afterward.

On the first work day of the new year, Jack called Booth to ask how his Christmas turned out and to apologize once again for fucking it up. They met for dinner and sat with Sid and talked until their asses fell asleep in their chairs. Booth blamed Sid's way with conversation.

That Spring, Jack came to see him in the hospital and Booth chalked the itching in his wrists and fluttering in his gut up to painkillers and exhaustion, nothing more.

One rainy Saturday, his arm still in a sling, he stood in the drugstore aisle raising bars of soap to his nose until he caught a trace of the way Jack smelled. He memorized it and made a silent bet with himself and left the bar on the shelf.

_Awake now, it rises and scents the air, drooling and ravenous. Ready to hunt. _

And so it went. Occasional beers after work. A couple more nights at Wong Foo's, talking trash and lingering in the parking lot while saying goodnight, Guardian Angel Sid right there to keep things above board. Lunch hours spent hanging around the lab, feigning interest in everything but only truly invested in the blue eyes behind the microscope lenses.

Until he heard about Kelton.

He caught the item on his daily intranet briefing before the rancid office java touched his tongue; just a couple of lines mentioning the death of a colleague at the Atlanta bureau. Cullen didn't flinch when he volunteered for funeral duty, hadn't seen through his flimsy excuse about having met him the winter before at a weapons refresher course at CID and okayed the trip to Georgia without a fuss.

When he stopped by the Jeffersonian later that day to work with Brennan on the Warren Lynch case, he didn't run up to the bug room to see Jack. That night, when he came across the ad in the automotive section promoting the appearance of one of the last surviving Tuckers at the Seal Cove Auto Museum, he didn't call him, and when Jack called he didn't pick up. He erased the genial message without listening and packed as ESPN blared from the living room set.

Keys, suitcase, e-ticket ready at the door. Guns cleaned and checked, strongbox locked. Shoes shined. Dishes washed, dried and put away. Front and back doors locked. Teeth brushed, nails clipped. Alarm set. Booth sat on the side of the bed, made the sign of the cross and said his nightly prayers. Our Father. Hail Mary. The serenity prayer.

"…accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

Sleep claimed him within minutes of pulling the blankets up, and when the alarm woke him in the morning he automatically filled his thoughts with lists and action plans and kept his hands busy with phone calls – Rebecca, Parker, Brennan – a steady crawl of internal chatter that kept him occupied right down to the jog down the jetway to the flight he'd come dangerously close to missing.

Well-practiced avoidance techniques. False pressures, controllable chaos. Didn't matter what they were called, this day's tricks worked to keep a different dog at bay: howling, gnawing guilt.

Until, of course, the soothing white noise of a pressurized cabin left him with nothing to consider but savage, relentless memory.

†

**New Orleans, 2004 **

Night, humid and wet as a lover's last kiss before sleep clung to his shirt and glued it to the dip between his shoulders. Nearly midnight on the last weekend of October and the Delta heat simmered the strange and vital human stew that was Halloween on Bourbon Street. Booth pushed past a trio of women with painted faces and bejeweled breasts, seeking a way out of a crowd that lined both sides of the narrow way to herald the coming of three floats making the turn around the corner of Saint Louis.

It was Camille's idea to spend the weekend on the Vieux Carré, the street without cares. "It's the best kind of tawdry," she'd said, reaching him over the phone line in that 900-number purr that hardened his dick and made resistance impossible. "C'mon, big boy, it's mysterious and sexy for me and there's donuts and music for you." At the last minute she was besieged by the case from hell and Seeley was stuck at JFK with two non-refundable tickets and a serious beignet jones.

Booth hydroplaned more than walked on a half-inch surface of human effluvia, nothing unusual for a city in the throes of a weekend only marginally less wild than Mardi Gras. Still, he wouldn't be caught bending to pick up a handful of glittering beads. He back-stepped into an open doorway to avoid a cluster of sotted conventioneers blustering down the sidewalk, and felt the pulse of a knife-edged baseline cut into his back and throb through his skin.

_Addicted to poison  
The poison is a cure sometimes  
I have a secret  
A secret written in the skies…_

The dancers glistened like honey slicked angels, moving in time to the trance beat, undulating in various stages of undress. Jackboots and crew socks, skin tight jeans torn at the curve of the buttocks, bare chests gleaming. Beneath the watery lilac and carnelian strobe lights the men looked artificially beautiful; they could have been models or actors or statues to Booth, absorbed in each other, caught in picture-perfect poses.

In 35 years of living in his split sexual skin Booth had never gone to a gay bar for companionship. The gay scene was as mysterious to him as rocket science, and that was fine. There were enough men in the world with his affliction, shielded by work, wives, kids or religious obligations, and if he needed one – wanted one – one wouldn't be that difficult to find.

He let the hypnotic beat blur and fade behind him as he turned back into the street and moved with the crowd toward his hotel. Grateful for the air conditioning and relative quiet, he crossed the ornate lobby and headed into the bar for a nightcap.

Cops never fail to recognize other cops. The first people in the bar to catch Booth's attention were a pair at a side table beneath the ironwork-trimmed window, negotiating in low, tense tones. He knew he'd be better off to turn his attention to the bartender and his drink – especially since he couldn't hear them – but there was something about the younger, taller of the two men that kept pulling his notice toward the table. Not that it mattered; from the look of them the matter was grievously important.

When the older cop passed behind Booth's stool on a wake of expensive cologne and the afterburn of a Cuban cigar, Seeley bent his head and glanced toward the table.

Hair curling over the collar of an off-the-rack summer suit, a day's growth of beard darkening the pale, sculpted cheeks, and a profile better suited for marble than flesh in its perfection – everything Booth could see said 'regulation pain in the ass'.

The sight of him made his mouth water.

_On the scent, familiar, close enough to catch…_

Focusing on the glass of whiskey on the bar and turning his thoughts to Camille and his growing dissatisfaction with their on-again, off-again status, Booth felt his mood darkening. He pretended to ignore the sound of fabric rustling against leather and a sighed request for Wild Turkey, neat, and stared at the embossed fleur de lis pattern on the cocktail napkin beneath his fingers.

"Tough day?" Booth asked without turning.

"You could say that."

Southeastern. Urban. Might be Atlanta or Tallahassee.

"Local or Federal?"

"Federal. You?"

"Yeah, out of D.C. Seeley Booth."

"Graham Kelton, Atlanta bureau."

Booth accepted his genial handshake with a slow grin.

"Your supe come all the way to New Orleans to give you shit about the haircut?"

"Fuck you." Kelton laughed, then, and raised his glass. "You know how those ex-military are. Let me guess … Marines?"

"75th Airborne."

They drank and commiserated and drank a little more. Just enough to soften the edges of the room and let Booth enjoy the tingling in his wrists and the sparks bursting at the base of his spine. Shadowed hazel eyes that lingered on his just a beat too long, slim fingers wrapped sinuously around the glass, slack shoulders a little too loose and ready beneath the poorly-fitted suit coat, and lips that were too red and ripe not to kiss.

Seeley paid for the round and sucked in his lower lip. Slid from the stool on Kelton's side and stood close enough to feel the heat from his body through the poly-cotton blend.

"Coming?"

The tiny lines at the corners of Kelton's eyes deepened, and Seeley knew that yes, he was. And yes, he would be.

The hiss of the hydraulic hotel room door, the polite and friendly sound of the strike plate hitting the lock, the snap of a dimmer switch in the short hallway the only preamble to the sound of mouths meeting, gluttonous and determined. Seeley peeled Kelton's coat from his shoulders and one tug at the waist of the oversized dress shirt was enough to spring it out of its tuck.

Biting kisses that stung and burned, the rasp of unshaven cheeks that sprouted friction rash within seconds, and the two men held the door up with their fevered embrace, panting and tearing at each other's mouths.

Kelton's neck was salty-hot and smooth beneath the wayward curls at his collar, pulse beating against Booth's tongue as he gasped for breath.

"Wait," he groaned, gripping Booth's tree trunk biceps and pushing him back. "Gimme a minute," he insisted, jerking his head in the direction of the tiny room's bathroom. "Hold that thought." A softer kiss, then, a promise of more, just enough to let Booth taste the sweetness of his mouth, enough to leave him needy and breathing hard. As he passed Seeley grabbed a handful of Kelton's ass and squeezed it, a promise of his own.

Seeley slipped out of his shoes and socks, banking the fire in his blood that if allowed to grow too soon would burst out of control, returning Booth to the urgency of wartime -- a place he desperately worked to avoid. A place he had to banish from his thoughts completely if he was going to survive. It was the worst risk he took when fucking men, he told himself. Believed it most of the time, too.

He pulled his tee shirt over his head and draped it over low arm of the velvet divan, turned and pulled open the curtains to look down at the crowds spilling over from Bourbon Street. Kelton's image reflected in the wavering glass, barefoot, shirt open, chest gleaming. His red necktie was wrapped around his fist like a bloody bandage, and his eyes gleamed as dark as the Delta itself.

Booth crossed the room, every step torture with the crush of brass and steel buttons against his solid, stiff cock. Licking his lips, danger and desire mixing in his gut, he kept his eyes locked to Kelton's as he came close enough to smell the bourbon on his breath and feel the warmth of his skin. He snapped two fingers beneath the necktie and pulled; it slipped off without resistance.

Pulling it between his hands like a strangler's best friend, he raised the tie between them.

"Want me to tie you up?"

"I want whatever you want to do," Kelton said simply.

Booth lifted the tie, encircled Kelton's neck with it and pulled him close.

"Falaqa," he sighed, closing his eyes, bumping the tip of his nose against Graham's. "Heard of that?"

Kelton's voice echoed low and even. "Tie your legs on a pole and beat the bottoms of your feet."

Booth nodded and moaned into Kelton's mouth before speaking.

"My feet ache in the spring. On rainy days," he said. "I'm not big on the tie-me-up."

Kelton pressed his face to Booth's, pulled his lower lip into his mouth and sucked. Seeley shivered and let the tie fall behind his back, deepening the kiss.

Time slowed to the beat of Booth's pulse in his throat, to the force of blood simmering beneath his skin and drowning out sound and setting to let raw instinct tear through his practiced calm. Need screaming in his head, he took Kelton's mouth hard, biting and licking and nipping; beard stubble raked the flat of his tongue and he tasted rock salt and bitter chlorine and something metallic. Cologne. Sweat. Alcohol.

He could feel Kelton shiver as he ripped the shirt from his shoulders, felt the dead giveaway gooseflesh rising on the chest and arms beneath his hands, could feel him struggling to stand despite the knowing shadows in his eyes and the i _fuck me /i _set of his mouth. One hard push and he was against the wall; Booth kicked his ankles wide apart as he would a common perp, nudging the inside of his knee as he wrenched the buckle of Kelton's belt open.

Whisper-slide of the cheap zipper, cotton boxers slid over hard, slim hips and Booth's fist swallowed his slender, swollen cock, easy as that. It was narrow, like his shoulders, but long and pretty, just like the rest of him. Booth's chuckle rumbled from his chest and hit the walls like a growl. Teeth bared against the taut cord of Kelton's neck, slight, sharp bites soothed by wide sweeps of his tongue and Booth was in heaven for a little while, oblivious to anything and everything but the livewire muscle in his fist and the familiar taste of sex sweat in his mouth.

Insistent hands on his pulled hard on Booth's belt, freeing it from its loops; buttons popped and denim and cotton knit sheared away from his frame and swollen flesh met swollen flesh. Smooth palms on his ass, cock to cock and despite the heat and pressure and buzz at the base of his spine Booth couldn't writhe close enough to Kelton's mouth to take the kiss he demanded.

The kiss he _needed._

_Seeley Booth defines his most intimate relationships by the quality of the kisses exchanged. Kisses tell him volumes that words cannot. Kisses set his expectations, raise his hopes, calm his fears._

_Cool, smooth lips on his brow that took the itch out of measles and soothed the ache of losing the Thanksgiving day game…_

_The feverish willingness of lips stained with cherry-vanilla gloss and a nimble tongue tasting of Diet Pepsi and sour kiwi jellybeans…_

_Lips cracked and split by desert heat, the tang of blood made tart by fear, sweetened by lust, tempered by friendship and desperate love…_

_Wet, drool-laced busses carried on gasps of delight and the squeal of his name; Daddy! Daddy!…_

Kelton bent forward and sank blunt teeth into Booth's shoulder and it was all Seeley needed to know. Sure fingers wrapped around his cock and pumped him hard and the distraction was enough to ease the seething frustration rising in Booth's mind, bring it down a notch to something he could manage.

Something he could translate into a message that a man who wouldn't be kissed could understand.

Booth stepped back and let the cool air soothe the heat of his face and chill the sweat collecting in the dip of his collarbone and in the carved junction of his hip bones. With a twist and tug he released the other man's dick and kicked his way out of the clothing that pooled at his feet. Eyes narrow and glittering in the light thrown by the converted gas lamps outside the hotel window, Kelton could have been a fallen seraphim out of a Tennessee Williams play; lanky and overheated, skin pale and glistening with sweat, his bone-straight cock dark and stiff against the bled-out landscape of his thighs.

Booth drank in the sight of him and fixed his eyes on his perfect, ruddy mouth and let the sound of revelers from the street below reach through the hum of blood in his ears.

Kelton bent and picked his trousers from the floor, rifled through the pockets. A slender leather billfold slipped to the floor. A glint of silver and ruby and the sound of water falling followed and Booth knew what had fallen out next without having to look. Kelton dropped the pants over the items and tossed a handful of foil packets in the direction of the bed.

It sang in Seeley then, a vicious melody of lust and anger, and it was all he could do to keep his temper in check as he bent down to the floor and scooped the dropped rosary beads in his hand. As he rose, he reached for his belt. One step, and another, and he was by the window again, shin dug into the ironwork side table next to the divan. The silver cross chimed against the tabletop and strung beads circled around it, safe.

The metal belt buckle warmed quickly in his fist as Kelton moved close behind him. Fingers and teeth on his shoulders, his tongue tracing the clean trim of his hairline at the back of his neck. Sharp hips bumped Booth from behind, and the wet heat of cock against his ass sent a jolt of furious desire straight to his own root just as long fingers wrapped around length of belt hanging from Booth's clenched fist and caressed it.

"I know what you want." Booth's laugh was coal-black and dangerous as he yanked the belt from beneath Kelton's touch. Leaning back, he rested his head against the other man's shoulder and closed his eyes. Pressed against the hard length that rubbed his ass cheek, and let Kelton's hands roam his chest, over his ribs and back again. Booth nipped at his neck, at the stubbled expanse of skin at his throat, pulled his earlobe between his teeth until Kelton whined through clenched teeth.

Booth turned in his arms and with a dancer's grace spun Kelton to face the low couch. Swift, silent, he looped the belt with one hand and skimmed the creamy mounds of Kelton's ass with the other. The first stroke brought water to his mouth and iron to his cock; Kelton flinched and bucked, then bent forward to grip the back of the divan.

Each stroke brought blooms of blood to Kelton's skin; the darker they manifested, the harder Booth swung, one hand steering the blows, the other stroking himself, teasing, pulling. Sending shockwaves of bittersweet pleasure through him. Kelton reared up between strikes as if to beg for them, seeking absolution with each snap and sting of leather on skin, head bent, face turned to watch as Booth moved, entranced.

It was all Booth could do to reach back to the bed and find a safe; barking a command to Kelton to stay still, he tore open the packet and sheathed himself with trembling hands. Sweat slick, the muscles in his calves rock-hard and unyielding, Booth smoothed his palms over the widening ruby welts before making Kelton slick with his spit and driving himself in.

Driven by the wild howl of lust, Booth fucked Kelton until he nearly threw him off, writhing and spitting and cursing through clenched teeth. Booth came in a burst of furious spasms and was still hard when he pulled out, swollen and sore and aching.

Kelton buckled to the divan and turned, grabbing Booth's wrist hard, hard enough to pull him down beside him, off balance.

He kissed him, then, with a fiery tongue and soft lips and Booth's name moaned like a prayer from the back of his throat.

††

They met only once after that. Kelton was in Washington, under investigation for a hostage situation gone wrong. He called Seeley, stopped by his apartment for a glass of whiskey and idle chatter. They talked about their work, traded bits and snatches of their lives, and fucked in discordant silence after Booth refused to lash him, offering a whispered excuse about punishment and absolution. Kelton came too fast, too easily, the color bitten out of his lips, and Booth didn't kiss him at all.

The oak doors creaked as Booth pressed them open and slid into the darkened church with a beam of mid-morning sunlight. A white-robed priest stood over the flower-draped bier, smudging the air with frankincense and copal.

"…the hope of a blessed resurrection shines upon him. In your hands, O Lord, life is changed, not taken away as you prepare an eternal dwelling for your good servant Graham. We praise you, Lord Jesus Christ, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, heaven and earth are filled with your glory…"

At the grave, Kelton's ex-wife thanked him for coming and kissed him on the cheek; his little girl appraised him with wide, dark eyes, and accepted Booth's hand with a shy smile. Kelton's parents nodded and gripped his hands tightly, grateful for his presence but truly aware of nothing but the empty echoes of their desolation. Kelton's supervisor praised him for making the trip from D.C. with a pat on the back.

In the terminal at Hartsfield he checked his messages. One from Brennan, asking where and how he was in her halting, questioning tone; one from Rebecca to confirm his plans with Parker for the coming weekend, and two from Jack.

"Dude, disappear much? Give me a call when you can," Hodgins laughed on the first one.

"Sorry to bug you, just thought I might catch you between cases." The second, less jocular, more wary.

The longing in Jack's voice brought blood to the surface of Booth's skin, prickled the kanji on each wrist.

_The tired dog stirs and mutters in fitful sleep, yelping in the clutches of a deep, mournful dream._

Booth returned the calls to Rebecca and Bones, and boarded his flight home. He replayed Jack's messages until the flight attendant asked him to turn off his cell. As the airbus lifted into the skies he closed his eyes, turned his head toward the window, swallowed past the rock in his throat, and prayed.

"Sacred heart of Jesus, I place my trust in thee. Guard those whom I love, keep them safe from all harm, protected from all dangers, and grant them your everlasting grace. Comfort me in my affliction, and have mercy on my sins. Protect those whom I love from my weakness. Protect them from _me_ ."

After a few weeks, Jack stops calling. When he sees Booth at the lab he regards him in the manner of a cautious acquaintance; invitations to lunches and dinners cease, and when Booth agrees to come along with the group, a last minute errand or task pulls Jack away. When they begin to speak again they stick to conversation about the cases they work on, and after enough time passes, Jack's smiles seem genuine, if not exactly warm.

Booth slips and slides on quarry stone, the rolling pebbles beneath his heels carrying him over the mound of turned earth as he runs without feeling the ground beneath him. Salt and grit sticks in his pores, in his hair, in his socks and shoes, fills his pockets. Sulfuric crystals embed in his hands, beneath his nails; he swallows them, inhales them and exhales them into the bright day all to claw Brennan and Hodgins out of their graves.

They live. They breathe, and when Angela kisses Jack, when Booth sees that Jack is blind to everything and everyone around him but her, he breathes through the ice in his chest. He's able to smile at Brennan then, smile and feel it and mean it.

Booth knows Jack may be right, that prayer is a loser's game and it's only a matter of time when the odds betray. But this time his prayer has been answered, and it just might save them both.

fin


End file.
